Keynote: Past, Present and Future of Engineering Education
P. Wankat1
Purdue University, USA wankat@purdue.edu
B. Williams
Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal and CEG-IST/UTL, Portugal Bill.Williams@estbarreiro.ips.pt
P. Neto
Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal, Portugal Pedro.Neto@estbarreiro.ips.pt
Conference Topic: Lessons from the past; Engineering education research; integration of research in engineering education
Keywords: Engineering Education Research; Literature analysis; Globalization
INTRODUCTION
Congratulations on the 40th anniversary of SEFI and the 38th anniversary of the
European Journal of Engineering Education (EJEE). Anniversaries are a good time to reflect on past, present and future. We use bibliometric analysis, statistics, and historical and current literature to track the history of SEFI and EJEE, to determine where they are now, and hopefully to make an informed guess of their future. We analyzed the authors, citations and content of EJEE and Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) in the 1973, (1975 for EJEE), 1983, 1993, 2003, and available 2013 issues. Although bibliometric analysis and statistics provide hard data, the interpretation is filtered by the authors’ personal knowledge. We start with a short narrative history of the journals that helps to explain some of the data and vice versa.
SHORT NARRATIVE HISTORY OF JEE AND EJEE
Some societal developments such as energy issues and sustainability impacted both journals while other developments such as the fall of the iron curtain had more impact on one journal (EJEE for this example). Both journals contained significant society news and other non-research material in the early years, and then slowly became more research oriented.
The history of EJEE is the history of a start up. In 1975 SEFI, which was officially created in January 19, 1973 at the University of Leuven in Belgium, had grown slowly from 75 to 122 to 150 members (Debruyn, 1975). EJEE was established in an attempt to remedy the unsatisfactory level of service provided to members. The
1
Corresponding Author P.C. Wankat
journal would include the results of working groups. Debruyn, the president of SEFI, closed with a comment that starting a journal was a heavy financial load for SEFI.
The editorial board (Editorial Board EJEE, 1975) positioned the journal to include: 1. scholarly articles and documented analytical reports,
2. description of institutions of systems in member countries, 3. editorials and letters to the editor to engender discussion, 4. in-depth reviews of books, and
5. news and features on SEFI.
Thus, SEFI apparently did not originally intend for EJEE to become the major research journal it has matured into.
The first issue included a paper from the 1974 SEFI conference in Manchester. This started a tradition that continued for a number of years including the first 1983 issue which consisted of contributions from a seminar on continuing engineering education at the Polytechnic Central London, and the third issue in 1983 had working panel results. A major issue at this time in both EJEE and JEE was falling enrollment.
In 1989 the iron curtain fell, in 1990 Germany was reunited, and in 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved. Who believed in 1988 that such a sentence could be written? Europe, SEFI, and EJEE had an enormous amount of work to do. This work was still continuing in 1993 and EJEE published papers from 1990 and 1992 SEFI conferences plus a number of reports. The other major interests were continuing engineering education and quality management in engineering education.
By 2003 EJEE had changed and the journal has the look and feel of an international research journal. There were significantly fewer reports about engineering education at a specific institution or in a specific country, and papers that reported on conditions at a specific location were generally from outside of Europe. EJEE appears to have reached maturity as a research journal.
In the 1970s US engineering education was recovering from the anti-technology fallout of the Vietnam War and in 1973 the key topic in Engineering Education, the official journal of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), was falling engineering enrollment. However, by 1983 enrollments had rebounded to new highs and the November 1983 issue of Engineering Education highlighted papers on
“Managing Large Classes” and “Alternatives to Limiting Enrollments.”
In the late 1980s ASEE decided it was time for a face lift and makeover of
Engineering Education. In August 1991 Engineering Education was retired after 81 years, and in September the first regular issue of ASEE PRISM, a news and general interest magazine, was published. The new quarterly Journal of Engineering Education was announced in 1991 to begin in 1992 but was delayed until January 1993. JEE was recast as a publication focusing on scholarly teaching responding to
Boyer’s (1990) paradigm shifting Scholarship Reconsidered. In the first issue Felder
et al (1993) quietly ushered in rigorous engineering education research supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). In 2003’s first issue 31% of the papers and in 2013 all of the papers with US authors acknowledge NSF support. US engineering education research is no longer a hobby but is now a profession.
Although the assumption may not be valid, current JEE papers often inherently assume that research will guide engineering education practice. For example, Diefes-Dux et al (2013, p.179) wrote, “This paper illustrates how interpretations of
student teams’ solution models…can be used to inform educational decisions.”
AUTHOR AND CITATION DATA
Table 1 lists the raw data on the authors and papers in EJEE and JEE. All of the authors of the first issue of EJEE were from Europe, but that rapidly changed.
Table 1. Author Data for EJEE and Engineering Education/JEE
Note: The history of ASEE by Reynolds & Seely, JEE,82 (3), 136-151 (1993) is not included in Tables 1 to 4 since the total number of citations (213) and the number of engineering education citations (208) are extreme outliers. The next largest number of total citations is 69 and of engineering education citations is 21.
YEAR NUMBER PAPERS
NUMBER AUTHORS
AUTHORS PAPER
# SINGLE AUTHOR PAPERS (%)
NUMBER OF COUNTRIES
TOP 2 COUNTRIES FOR # OF AUTHORS (% AUTHORS) EJEE
2013 (ISSUES
#1 - 3)
27 64 2.4 9 (33.3%) 19
US (28.1%), THE NETHERLANDS (9.4%)
2003 44 100 2.3 16 (36.4%) 22 US (15.7%), THE NETHERLANDS (13.9%)
1993 53 83 1.6 39 (73.6%) 24 UK (20.5%),
GERMANY (12.0%)
1983 54 61 1.1 43 (79.6%) 15 UK (23.0%),
FRANCE (14.8%)
1975 _9_ 11_ 1.2 8 (88.9%) 6 UK (36.4%),
DENMARK (27.3%) TOTALS
OR AVG 187 319 1.7 115 (61.5%) 44 UK (15.3%), US (12.9%) ENGINEERING EDUCATION/JEE
2013
(ISSUE #1) 7 24 3.4 1 (14.3%) 5
US (79%), DENMARK (8.3%)
2003 38 108 2.8 3 (7.9%) 5 US (91.7%),
CANADA (3.7%) 1993
(JEE) 36 71 2.0 17 (45.9%) 2
US (98.6%), CANADA (1.4%) 1983
(ENGR ED) 59 85 1.4 38 (64.4%) 3
US (96.3%), CANADA (2.4%))
1973 113 160 1.4 79 (69.9%) 3 US (94.4%),
CANADA (4.4%) TOTALS
OR AVG 253 446 1.8 138 (54.5%) 10
US (94.4%), CANADA (3.1%)
The geographical spread of the authors of JEE is significantly less broad than that of
EJEE. If the data is representative of all years, 97.5% of the authors are from the US and Canada and the remaining eight countries (Denmark, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Nigeria, Singapore, Thailand, and United Kingdom) share the remaining 2.5%.
The data in Table 1 show a marked reduction in the percentage of papers written by single authors and increased collaboration of authors in both EJEE and JEE. In both journals, although more pronounced in JEE, the number of authors per paper starts low and increases. There was also an increase in papers written by collaborators from different countries. EJEE had no multiple country collaborations in 1975 and 1993, 3 papers (5.6%) in 1983, 6 papers (13.6%) in 2003 and 5 papers (18.5%) in 2013. JEE had no multiple country collaborations in 1975, 1983 and 1993, 3 papers (7.9%) in 2003 and 3 papers (28.6%) in 2013. The authors of this paper can testify that the Internet makes collaboration across countries and across oceans possible.
Table 2 shows that both journals have rapidly increased the average number of citations per paper, although JEE, the older journal, started out higher and has remained higher. The numbers of citations in both journals has become large enough that levelling off or reduction of the number of citations would help readers.
Citations to some extent illustrate an author’s breath of scholarship. Self-citations
have been separated out since they do not illustrate breath.
Table 2. Citation Data for EJEE and Engineering Education/JEE
YEAR EJEE
# CITS
EJEE #CITS PAPER
EJEE # SELF
CITS
EJEE % SELF
CITS
ENGR ED/JEE
# CITS
JEE #CITS PAPER
JEE # SELF CITS
JEE % SELF
CITS
2013 812 30.1 43 5.3% 368 52.6 60 16.3%
2003 634 14.4 54 8.5% 934 24.3 59 6.4%
1993 247 4.7 19 7.7% 444 12.3 55 12.4%
1983 52 1.0 5 9.6% 463 7.8 31 6.6%
1975 EJEE
1973 ENGR ED. 9 1.0 0
0
429 3.8 17
4.1% TOTALS OR AVG 1754 9.4 121 6.9% 2638 10.8 223 8.1% Tables 3 and 4 show what sources are cited. Table 3 is a relatively complete listing of journal sources, but does not include URL and government reports that are included in the total number of citations. The listings in Table 4 were truncated because many engineering textbooks, education journals and books were cited only once or twice.
Since Engineering Education was over sixty years old in 1973, its citation pattern was fully developed. The most cited source is the journal itself, which is the common pattern for engineering education journals (Wankat, 2011). 1993 was a watershed year because JEE had a different focus than Engineering Education. The increase in citations/paper in Table 2 and the difference in sources cited in Tables 3 and 4 from 2003 to 2013 compared to 1973 to 1993 reflects JEE’s more scholarly and later rigorous research approach.
Since EJEE was new, there were few early EJEE papers to cite for several years. As a result EJEE did not become the most cited journal in EJEE until sometime between 1993 and 2003. During this period EJEE also served as the news magazine for SEFI and there are a significant number of citations of reports and meetings.
of engineering education sources from 1975 to 1993. If we assume the citation pattern is the same in 2003 plus 2013, we can find the expected value as follows:
Expected Value Engr Ed 2003 and 2013= (# Engr Ed 1975 to 1993) × [(# total 2003 and 2013)/(# total 1975 to 1993)] = (72) × [(1446)/(308)] = 388 citations,
which is significantly less than the 484 engineering education citations observed. From Table 4 the expected value of EJEE Engineering and Science citations in 2003 and 2013 = (52)(1446)/(308) =244 versus 177 observed. The expected value of
EJEE Education citations in 2003 and 2013 is 314 versus 525 observed. We interpret these effects as due to the maturing of EJEE by substituting engineering education publications for engineering, math or science citations and substituting education and psychology publications for various reports.
Table 3. Engineering Education Sources in EJEE and JEE. * 8 cited in one paper.
EJEE ENGR EDUC/JEE
YEAR 75 83 93 2003 13 73 83 93 03 13
TOTAL ENGINEERING EDUC CITS= 1 23 48 222 262 141 160 184 365 106
SELECTED ENGR EDUC SOURCES
EJEE 3 1 28 46 6 5
SEFI MEETINGS 6 1 15 3 1
SEFI LITERATURE 5 5 4 0
IEEE TRANSACTIONS EDUCATION 1 1 1 6 6 3 9
JEE (AKA ENGR EDUCATION) 3 24 35 32 64 59 99 41
INTL J ENGR ED (IJEE). ORIGINAL
NAME INT J APPLD ENGR ED 1 25 11 6 2 14
PROC. ASEE/IEEE FRONTIERS EDUC.
CONF (FIE) 1 1 8 5 7 5 42 4
PROC INTL SEMINAR IMPROVE GENDER BAL. ENG. EDUC USING ICT
METHODS
14*
J WOMEN & MINORITIES SCI & ENGR 2
PROCEED. ASEE ANNUAL MEET 8 30 7 6 28 29 7
ABET 4 3 5 3 1
GLOBAL J. ENGINEERING ED. 7* 2
ASEE PRISM 1 6 9
ASEE REPORTS 1 1 1 1 2 8 2
ASEE REGIONAL CONFERENCES 1 2 7 4
ADVANCES ENGR EDUCATION 1 1
CHEMICAL ENGR EDUCATION 9* 2 1 1 4 1
COMPUTER APS ENGR EDUC 3 1
J. PROF. ISSUES EDUC. & PRACTICE 15 4 1 1
ERM J (ED RSCH METHODS DIV ASEE) 7 1
ASEE CASE STUDY FILES 3 10
AUSTRLASIAN J ENGR ED. 1
education citations did not change, but JEE’s positioning as accepting only rigorous EER papers encouraged the continued increase of psychology/education citations and decrease in engineering/science citations.
Table 4. Engineering & Science, Education and Other Sources in EJEE and JEE.
EJEE ENGR EDUC/JEE
1975 1983 1993 2003 2013 1973 83 93 03 13
ENGR & SCIENCE TOTAL CITS = 0 3 49 100 77 96 88 78 88 49
SELECTED ENGR & SCIENCE SOURCE
IEEE SPECTRUM 2 2 2 7 1 3
IEEE PROCEEDINGS 4 4 1
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING 7 2 1 1
SCIENCE 1 8 3 3 4
NATURE 2 2 1
ISSUES SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 3 3 1
THE BRIDGE (NATL ACAD. ENGR.) 3 1 1 7 2
PSYCH/EDUCATION TOTAL CITS = 6 16 45 193 332 141 152 96 421 187
PSYCH/EDUC SELECTED SOURCES
BRITISH J ED TECHNOLOGY 1 8 1
CHRONICLE HIGHER EDUCATION 1 6 1 8 1
CHANGE 1 2 3
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY R&D 2 1 4
EDUC. PSYCH MEASUREMENT 4 2
INTL. J SCIENCE EDUCATION 2 5
J HIGHER EDUCATION 5 1 2
J ED PSYCH 1 10 1 3
J LEARNING SCI. 1 10
REVIEW EDUC. RESEARCH 1 1 1 1 1
REVIEW RESEARCH EDUC. 1 1 1
COMPUTERS IN EDUCATION 5 5 1
BRANSFORD ET AL., HOW PEOPLE
LEARN 2 6 2
BLOOM ET AL., TAXONOMY 1 2 1 1 2
MISC. SOURCES
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 2 3 1 1
IEEE TRANS. ENGR. MGMT. 5* 1
IEEE TRANS. PROF. COMMUNIC 5 9
REFERENCE DISCIPLINE ANALYSIS
Over the past two decades reference discipline data have been studied in emergent disciplinary fields such as Information Systems and Enterprise Engineering research (Grover et al 2006, Liles & Johnson 1996, Wade et al 2006) and EER (Williams et al. 2013). Reference discipline analysis studies the disciplines referenced and cited in research papers to track the developing maturity of a research field. It assumes that an emerging research area will depend largely on existing disciplines in the early stages; gradually generate more internal theoretical concepts, frameworks and models; and in a mature stage, serve as a reference discipline for other disciplines.
reference disciplines used to support their research. As the number of papers in
EJEE in the early issues was small, we combined those for 1974 and 1975 giving a total of 13 papers. In the case of 2013 only 18 EJEE and 7 JEE articles had been published at the time of writing.
Decisions as to which were research articles as distinct from essays, curriculum proposals or descriptive texts (all of which were frequent in the earlier days of both journals) were based on the guiding principles proposed by Shavelson and Towne (2002). We considered research articles to be those which fulfilled three or more of the following six principles:
Pose significant questions that can be investigated empirically.
Link research to relevant theory.
Use methods that permit direct investigation of the question.
Provide a coherent and explicit chain of reasoning.
Replicate and generalize across studies.
Disclose research to encourage professional scrutiny and critique
For the reference discipline analysis, our classification system required authors to specifically show that the discipline underpinned their research. Such references were normally cited in the background or methodology sections of papers and were frequently mentioned as keywords. Disciplines appearing only in the bibliographic references section were not considered reference disciplines. Each journal article was classified independently by two authors and the classifications later discussed until they were consensual. The results are shown in Figures 1 and 2 and in Table 5.
Fig. 1 Percentage Research Papers Fig. 2. Reference Disciplines
The trend in both JEE and EJEE papers is broadly similar although notably more accentuated in the former. Initially there were little or no research papers in the 70’s
and 80’s and then there was gradually increasing research content with an
occasional reference discipline (typically psychology). By 2013 there was a very significant number of reference disciplines drawn upon – 61% for EJEE and 243% for
Table 5. Statistics for Reference Discipline Analysis
EJEE JEE
Source/Year 75 83 93 03 13 73 83 93 03 13 # Papers Analyzed 13 28 20 32 18 24 21 37 24 7 Classified as Research
Papers
# 0 1 1 12 18 # 0 2 10 12 7 % 0 4 5 38 100 % 0 10 27 50 100 Classified as having
Reference Discipline
# 0 0 0 1 11 # 0 1 3 5 17 % 0 0 0 3 61 % 0 5 8 21 243
CONCLUSION
Both journals followed similar trends. They progressed from opinion essays, reports, and descriptive articles to research articles. There was a qualitative evolution in breath of scholarship with increasingly interdisciplinary research articles with more collaboration and more references. This is more accentuated in JEE. JEE and EJEE
both became more frequently cited. The international character of both journals has also evolved over the 40 years – geographical spread is notably broader in EJEE.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Phil Wankat was partially supported by NSF Grant EHR-1123108.
REFERENCES
[1] Debruyn, HP (1975), A short note about and from SEFI, EJEE, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1-3.
[2] Editorial Board EJEE (1975), Letter from the editorial board, EJEE, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 10-11.
[3] Boyer, EL (1990), Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Princeton, NJ.
[4] Felder,RM, Forrest, KD, Baker-Ward, L, Dietz, EJ, and Mohr, PH (1993), A longitudinal study of engineering student performance and retention: I. Success and failure in the introductory course, JEE, Vol. 82, No. 1, pp. 15-21.
[5] Lattuca, LR, Terenzini, PT, and Volkwein, JF (2006), Engineering Change, A Study of the Impact of EC 2000, Executive Summary, ABET, Baltimore, MD, http://www.abet.org/engineering-change/
[6] Diefes-Dux, HA, Hjalmarson, MA, and Zawojewski, JS (2013), Student team solutions to an open-ended mathematical modelling problem: Gaining insights for educational improvement, JEE, Vol. 102, No. 1, pp. 179-216.
[7] Wankat, P (2011), Guest editorial: Cross-fertilization of engineering education research and development, IEEE Trans. Educ., Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 521-522.
[8] Grover, V, Gokhale, R, Lim, J. and Ayyagari, R (2006), About reference disciplines and reference differences: A critique of Wade et al., Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 336-350.
[9] Liles, DH, Johnson, ME et al. (1996), The enterprise engineering discipline, Proc. Fifth Annual Industrial Engineering Research Conference, Minneapolis, MN.
[10] Wade, M, Biehl, M and Kim, H (2006), Information Systems Is NOT A Reference Discipline (And What We Can Do About It), Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 247-269.
